Cookeville Utility Rates May Increase for Upcoming Projects

Cookeville city officials are looking into current utility rates in preparation for future projects.

City Manager Mike Davidson says consultants are looking at various utilities to determine whether rates need adjusting to cover project expenses.

Cookeville City officials will discuss utility changes during the next work session.

“We’ve got some big projects coming up especially in water and sewer,” Davidson says. “We’ve hired a consultant as part of the budget process. We’ve asked the consultant to look at water and sewer and their rates, and what we need to do to be able to fund those big projects to make sure we’ve got sewer infrastructure and capacity at the water plant as well.”

Davidson says some utility rates could potentially increase depending on whether current rates will cover funding for the projects or not.

“Natural gas is looking at their rates too just to make sure they have sufficient rates to cover gas costs and their projects they’ve got coming up,” Davidson says. “Electric is looking at something similar too just to confirm that their rates are where they need to be and we don’t need to look at modifying those rates at all.”

Davidson says increasing rates for city utilities shouldn’t be a major concern compared to other prices across the state.

“I think we have some of the lowest rates across the state… and we have very competitive rates,” Davidson says. “But we’ll make sure those rates stay healthy and that we can get those services provided to the customers. We’ve got some big projects coming up and, especially water and sewer, it’s going to take some additional revenue to make sure we’ve got the infrastructure in place. That way when we turn the water faucet on that water comes out and we’ve got capacity at the plant or we got capacity at the sewer plant.”

The work session is tentatively scheduled for Jan 30. A location for the meeting has not yet been determined. The meeting will be open to residents for public input.